Active clinical trials for "Mood Disorders"

This study will examine: 1) The impact of psycho education group therapy sessions relating to beliefs/myths associated with bipolar affective disorder (BAD) on the emotional wellbeing, clinical course and cognition of individuals diagnosed with BAD 2) Will examine the existence of those same beliefs among the various caregivers - psychiatrists, general practitioners, social workers, and psychiatric nurses. The investigators hypothesize that psychoeducation group therapy will be effective in refuting the myths and will lead to better treatment adherence, longer remissions, fewer hospitalizations, improved self esteem, increased optimism, and better control over the disease process. The investigators also believe that they will identify some beliefs/myths or preconceived notions that are common to both caregivers and individuals with BAD.

There is a lack of incentive approach for patients who suffer from schizophrenia yet lack the insight to accept treatment. Most existing approaches involve coercion and involuntary hospitalizations. This study will explore whether patients with poor insight and lacking in competence for treatment decisions will improve their acceptance and adherence of depot injection antipsychotic medication if a financial incentive is offered. Ethical considerations are also explored for this innovative pilot study

Investigators are doing this study to examine if a new personalized education program for patients with mood disorders (depression and bipolar disorders) will help them take their medications as prescribed by doctors. Investigators will teach patients about how, when and why it is important for them to take their medications as prescribed. Also, investigators will ask patients why they do not take medications as prescribed. Furthermore, investigators will examine whether our education program might save money if it prevents problems related to not taking medication.

Psychotherapy is one of the cornerstones of mental health services. It is provided by psychiatrist, psychologists and psychiatric social worker in both hospital and out-patient services, and is assumed to require massive manpower and training inputs. Internationally, the clinical outcomes of routine mental health services are rarely recorded or reported. However, a rough estimation is that half (40-60%) of all psychotherapies have a favorable clinical outcome. Recently (Clark et al, 2017), the English Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) Program, which delivers psychotherapies to more than 537 000 patients in the UK each year, indicated that 44% of the patients recovered, and 62%- improved. Consistent with a causal model, most organizational factors also predicted between-year changes in outcome, together accounting for 33% of variance in reliable improvement and 22% for reliable recovery. The proposed study aims at dramatically improving the yield of psychotherapies in the Mental Health Services by combining monitoring and patient-therapist matching strategies. The first will be achieved by implementing Routine Outcome Monitoring (ROM), and the second- by applying a patient-therapist match-re-match procedure during psychotherapy

The objective of this study is to determine whether the practice of a non-drug related intervention technique (behavioral modification technique consisting of a combination of breathing exercises, cold exposure and meditation) has an effect on long-term cannabinoid receptor function in a control group as well as in a group of patients suffering from bipolar affective disorder (BAD). Specifically, the objective of this study is to test whether the applied behavioral modification technique is able to alter cannabinoid receptor density in brain areas that modulate mood and motivational drive (such as vmPFC, PAG, VTA, amygdala and OFC). The investigators believe that these studies will form the impetus for a better understanding and deployment of non-drug related treatment methods in patients with various depressive symptoms. In particular, it appears that the proposed behavioral modification technique might be a powerful, currently under-appreciated, method to positively modulate the brain's own cannabinoid system.

Mood disorders are a group of psychiatric disorders that can affect a person's mood, energy, and motivation. Emotional blunting has been observed in clinical practice in patients with mood disorders. Emotional blunting has a negative impact on patients' overall treatment and leads to poorer adherence. The Oxford Depression Questionnaire (ODQ) is a measuring instrument of emotional blunting. The ODQ is expected to be a scientifically valid tool for detecting emotional blunting. The ODQ has high construct validity and internal reliability. However, no scientific validity studies have been conducted on ODQ in Chinese population. Therefore, this study is intended to investigate the reliability and validity of the ODQ in Chinese patients with mood disorders.

Follow-up study within the Whitehall II study, selecting 800 participants for further neuropsychological, clinical and imaging (MRI) examinations to examine brain structure and function in relation to age-related diseases and the modifiable and non-modifiable factors affecting resilience against and vulnerability to adverse brain changes.

Mental disorders have been shown to be associated with a number of general medical conditions (also referred to as somatic or physical conditions). The investigators aim to undertake a comprehensive study of comorbidity among those with treated mental disorders, by using high-quality Danish registers to provide age- and sex-specific pairwise estimates between the ten groups of mental disorders and nine groups of general medical conditions. The investigators will examine the association between all 90 possible pairs of prior mental disorders and later GMC categories using the Danish national registers. Depending on whether individuals are diagnosed with a specific mental disorder, the investigators will estimate the risk of receiving a later diagnosis within a specific GMC category, between the start of follow-up (January 1, 2000) or at the earliest age at which a person might develop the mental disorder, whichever comes later. Follow-up will be terminated at onset of the GMC, death, emigration from Denmark, or December 31, 2016, whichever came first. Additionally for dyslipidemia, follow-up will be ended if a diagnosis of ischemic heart disease was received. A "wash-out" period will be employed in the five years before follow-up started (1995-1999), to identify and exclude prevalent cases from the analysis. Individuals with the GMC of interest before the observation period will be considered prevalent cases and excluded from the analyses (i.e. prevalent cases were "washed-out"). When estimating the risk of a specific GMC, the investigators will consider all individuals to be exposed or unexposed to the each mental disorder depending on whether a diagnosis is received before the end of follow-up. Persons will be considered unexposed to a mental disorder until the date of the first diagnosis, and exposed thereafter.

In this study, the investigators want to assess spiritual resources, spiritual distress and spiritual coping in patients with psychiatric disorders of the affective spectrum with a new designed questionnaire the Spiritual Distress and Resources Questionnaire (SDRQ)

The purpose of this study is to study the relationship between insulin and glucose action and neuropsychological functioning (memory, attention, general thinking abilities) in persons with depression.